Embodiments of the invention disclosed describe a new method and system for connecting and adding greater functionality to electronic devices. Previous standards in digital connectivity enabled transfer of protected uncompressed video and audio data from a source device (e.g., a DVD player) to a sink device (e.g., a TV) in a unidirectional path. FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art system wherein is shown a video channel 106 for carrying video data from an HDMI Source device 102 to an HDMI sink device 104. Also shown is an HDMI control channel 108. Essentially, systems and methods typically using TMDS or TMDS-like serial links send encoded video data from a transmitter (HDMI Source 102 in FIG. 1) to a receiver (HDMI Sink 104 in FIG. 1) over video channels 106 during active video periods, encoded audio data during active audio periods, and encoded control data during active control periods of the same video channels. In typical prior art systems as illustrated in FIG. 1, the HDMI Control Channel 108 is an under utilized very low bandwidth channel, and cannot be used to send additional user data like audio data, video data, or/and bulk user data. It would thus be desirable to have the use of a high bandwidth channel in addition to the illustrated video channel. Embodiments of the current invention allow for the usage of an additional high bandwidth channel that operates bi-directionally, but without the need to increase the number of circuits or connections.
In typical prior art systems like that illustrated in FIG. 1, a pixel clock is transmitted over a separate clock channel in the TMDS link. FIG. 3 illustrates a prior art video data transmission through a TMDS encoder and decoder, along with a separate, dedicated clock channel. By embedding the clock signal of the clock channel in the video data channel or channels, the design would free up the conventional clock channel in conventional systems to provide an additional channel for bi-directional data transfer.
Embodiments of the invention disclose a system and method of a high-speed hybrid channel that can carry compressed video, high quality audio, content protection, control signals, and data packets in both directions, i.e. from source to sink and sink to source. Embodiments described disclose both a unique physical and logical layer making it a stand-alone complete standard. Additionally, it would be desirable to have a system that can be made backwards compatible with other existing standards such as HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort. The embodiments described can be made compatible to other standards such as HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort.